Flooring in Mesquite, TX

Mesquite was a depot town on the Texas and Pacific from 1873 and stayed agricultural until the Dallas suburbs reached it after the war. Then it went vertical: 1,696 people in the 1950 census, 27,526 in 1960, 55,131 in 1970, with annexations pushing the city to 20.6 square miles by 1960. Big Town Mall opened in 1959 as the first enclosed mall in the Southwest. The Mesquite Championship Rodeo started in 1958 and still runs Saturday nights at Mesquite Arena through the summer, and Town East Mall anchors the retail near I-635 and I-30. Opal Lawrence Historical Park, on the National Register, preserves one of the earliest Mesquite farmsteads, and the Florence Ranch Homestead from 1871 predates the town. Devil's Bowl Speedway keeps stock car racing in the city. About 151,000 people live here now.

For a flooring crew, Mesquite is really two cities. The mid-century half, Town East Estates, Skyline, Falcon's Lair, Indian Trails and the older pockets around downtown Mesquite, is ranch houses from the 1960s and 1970s sitting on their original slabs. Palos Verdes followed in 1981. Those slabs have carried two or three generations of flooring: glued-down carpet pad, sheet vinyl, tile beds, tack strip scars along every wall. Getting a modern rigid core plank or large-format tile to lie right on one of them takes real prep, grinding adhesive residue, filling low spots, respecting the control joints and testing moisture on concrete poured before anyone worried much about vapor retarders. That prep is most of the labor, and it is where a cheap bid quietly disappears.